ON MERTON AND THE EAST
AN INTRODUCTION

On September 9, 1968, days before he left his Kentucky monastery for the Asian pilgrimage on which he died, the Trappist monk Thomas Merton (1915–1968), copied the following from Robinson Jeffers’s poem “The Torch-Bearers’ Race” into his journal:

We have climbed at length to a height, to an end, this end:
shall we go down again to Mother Asia?
Some of us will go down, some will abide. . . .1

How much did this convert to Roman Catholicism know about “Mother Asia”? Why was he so anxious to visit her? These questions are appropriately raised by someone reading a collection of Merton’s thoughts on Eastern meditation. This brief introduction hopes to answer these questions and to explain the book’s principles of organization and selection.

Merton’s journey to “Mother Asia,” “. . . a physical fact and a psychological and spiritual actualization of a symbolic movement,”2 began long before 1968. As a student at Oakham School in England in the late 1920s, he argued the pro-Gandhi side in a debate (and lost). At Columbia University in the 1930s he read Huxley’s Ends and Means and Father Wieger’s French translations of Oriental texts, and he met a Hindu monk, Bramachari, who encouraged him to read Christian classics. Some scholars think this led to Merton’s conversion to Christianity. By then a professed monk at Gethsemani, Merton in his 1949 journal (published as The Sign of Jonas) mentions a postulant who received Zen training, as well as correspondence with an Indian in Simla about Pantajali’s yoga. Br. Patrick Hart, one of Merton’s novices, reports that in the 1960s D. T. Suzuki stimulated Merton’s interest in Zen. By the late 1960s Merton had studied in the best English translations then available not only Zen, but also Raja Yoga, Tibetan Buddhism, Theravada Buddhism, Madhyamika philosophy, Hinduism, Shankara’s Avaita Vedanta, the Bhagavad Gita, Confucianism, and Taoism (particularly Chuang Tzu). He had also practiced calligraphy and brush painting.

Merton was convinced there was a “real possibility of contact on a deep level between . . . contemplative and monastic tradition in the West and the various contemplative traditions in the East. . . .”3 He wrote in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, “If I affirm myself as a Catholic merely by denying all that is Muslim, Jewish, Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist, etc., in the end I will find that there is not much left for me to affirm as a Catholic: and certainly no breath of the Spirit with which to affirm it.”4 Merton’s study of Asian religions led to several publications. After his paraphrase of the Taoist text The Way of Chuang Tzu (1965) and his collection of sayings of Gandhi, Gandhi on Non-Violence (1965), Merton’s largest body of writing on Eastern religions is on Zen. It includes Mystics and Zen Masters (1967), Zen and the Birds of Appetite (1968), the posthumously published Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (1973), and Introductions East and West (1981), as well as letters to a dizzying and dazzling array of Eastern scholars and practitioners including Masao Abe, Amiya Chakravarty, Heinrich Dumoulin, Thích Nhất Hạnh, William Johnson, Marco Pallis, John C. H. Wu, and several Tibetan lamas, including H. H. the Dalai Lama.

Merton “went East,” not as a tourist, but as a monastic pilgrim. He noted in a talk planned for Calcutta in October 1968, “I come as a pilgrim . . . to drink from ancient sources of monastic vision and experience. I seek . . . to become a better and more enlightened monk. . . . [W]e have now reached a stage of (long-overdue) religious maturity at which it may be possible for someone to remain perfectly faithful to a Christian and Western monastic commitment, and . . . to learn in depth from . . . a Buddhist or Hindu discipline and experience.”5 On July 9, 1968, he wrote to Dom Willibrord Van Dikj, “I am particularly interested, when in the Orient, in making some contacts with non-Christian monks, above all Buddhists, as I am quite involved in the study of comparative mysticism — or ways of ‘contemplation’ — and in relations with Buddhists and Hindus.”6 The pilgrim monk sought spiritual support for his journey, imploring Dom Jacques Winandy, “Pray for me. I am going to India. I believe this is one of the greatest graces of my life and I look forward to meeting many monks of other traditions, particularly Buddhists. The experience could be invaluable. But it will need much prayer.”7

When Merton turned toward “Mother Asia,” he was not rejecting his religious tradition and commitment, not leaving something behind, but enlarging his (already expansive) heart’s embrace. Merton looked East for language to articulate his Christian, monastic, spiritual experience, for a cultural alternative to what he saw as the corruptions of Western society,8 to explore techniques to facilitate his own spiritual growth, and to encourage the monastic renewal initiated by the Second Vatican Council. In her outstanding selection of Merton’s writings, Christine Bochen makes the point incisively:

Neither a professional ecumenist nor a specialist in interreligious Dialogue, Merton modeled a way of encounter and dialogue. . . . Deeply rooted in his own tradition, he was open and receptive to the wisdom of the world’s religions. Merton embodied the spirit that is essential to building unity: he was open to the experience and perspective of others and respectful of their beliefs and practice. He was also clear and firm in his own faith convictions. Searching for common ground, he knew well, does not mean discounting one’s own roots.9

In his “Letter to Pablo Antonio Cuadra Concerning Giants,” which appears in what may be his best collection of poetry, Emblems of a Season of Fury (1963), Merton tellingly writes, “It is my belief that we should not be too sure of having found Christ in ourselves until we have found him also in the part of humanity that is most remote from our own” and “God speaks, and God is to be heard, not only on Sinai, not only in my own heart, by in the voice of the stranger” (italics Merton’s).10

In “Thomas Merton in Dialogue with Eastern Religions,” the Merton scholar William Shannon noted five insights from Western spiritual classics that resonate with what Merton found in the East: “(1) the priority of experience over speculation; (2) the inadequacy of words to articulate religious experience; (3) the fundamental oneness of all reality; (4) the realization that the goal of all spiritual discipline is transformation of consciousness; and (5) ‘purity of heart’ . . . liberation from attachment.”11 These themes are represented in this volume and in Merton’s attitude in a 1963 letter to Marco Pallis: “. . . I have a deep affinity and respect for Buddhism, and I think that I am as much a Chinese Buddhist in temperament and spirit as I am a Christian. . . . I think one can certainly believe in the revealed truths of Christianity and follow Christ, while at the same time having a Buddhist outlook on life and nature. . . . A certain element of Buddhism in culture and spirituality is by no means incompatible with Christian belief. . . .”12

Merton’s pilgrimage East was not about what in Gandhi on Non-Violence he called “laughable syncretisms,”13 not about “syncretism, indifferentism, the vapid and careless friendliness that accepts everything by thinking of nothing.”14 The most profound pilgrimages are made by those with homes which they have voluntarily left and to which they can return. Although Merton believed religious dialogue “must take place under the true monastic conditions of quiet, tranquility, sobriety, leisureliness, reverence, meditation, and cloistered peace,”15 his principles for “contemplative dialogue” are universally applicable: Dialogue is for

those who have entered with full seriousness into their own . . . tradition. . . .

Second, there can be no question of a facile syncretism.
. . .

Third, there must be a scrupulous respect for important differences. . . .

Fourth, attention must be concentrated on . . . the area of true self-transcendence and enlightenment. . . .

Fifth, questions of institutional structure, monastic rule, traditional forms of cult and observance must be seen as relatively secondary and are not to become the central focus of attention.”16

These principles rest on a conviction articulated in Zen and the Birds of Appetite. “All religions . . . ‘meet at the top,’ and their various theologies and philosophies become irrelevant when we see that they were merely means for arriving at the same end. . . .”17

That religions “meet at the top” brings us to this sampling of Merton’s thought on that universal journey to “the top.” I interpret “meditation” not narrowly as a religious practice, but broadly as a life stance, a world view founded in the practice of prayer. Meditation’s contemplative stance is “grounded” in landscape, built on teaching,
and reflects particular practices. This is reflected in the book’s three divisions, which draw heavily from Merton’s thoughts on Buddhism, the Eastern tradition with which he was most familiar. There are occasional references to Christianity because Merton was a Christian, and because by geographical origin Christianity is an Eastern (Asian) religion.

I admit to a certain dis-ease with “extracting nuggets” from their contexts. My defense is that Merton himself followed this practice in The Wisdom of the Desert (1960), Gandhi on Non-Violence (1965), and The Way of Chuang Tzu (1965), and in quotations in the journal he kept during his final journey. Merton notes his collection from Chuang Tzu is “the result of five years of reading, study, annotation, and meditation.”18 I have studied Merton since 1976.

Language has changed since the 1960s. A particular difficulty is that Merton’s language is not gender-inclusive. This grates on the contemporary ear. I hope the dissonance will not obscure the truths spoken, because it seemed dishonest to change Merton’s words. Explanatory “alterations” occur in brackets. Quotations are followed by a parenthesis giving their source. When a quotation is itself a quotation (Merton quoting Gandhi, for example) the reference includes Merton’s citation. Apparatus is minimal to avoid distracting from the beauty of Merton’s thought. A list of works cited, with abbreviations, precedes the text, and a brief glossary of unfamiliar terms appears at the end of the book. Definitions are drawn largely from those in Merton’s Asian Journal.

I hope sampling these small, dense morsels might entice you to read the volumes from which they come. I hope they will assist and be good companions on your journey “to the top.” Of Zen and the Birds of Appetite Merton said, “the purpose of this present book is not apologetic.”19 Nor is the purpose of this book, which echoes Merton’s prayer for his friends in a circular letter of September 1968 as he left Gethsemani Abbey for “Mother Asia”: “Our real journey in life is interior; it is a matter of growth, deepening, and of an ever greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts. Never was it more necessary for us to respond to that action. I pray that we may all do so.”20

–BONNIE THURSTON

1. The Other Side of the Mountain: The Journals of Thomas Merton (Volume 7, 1967–1968) Patrick Hart, O.C.S.O., editor (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999), 167.

2. Deba P. Patnaik, “Syllables of a Great Song: Merton and Asian Religious Thought” in The Message of Thomas Merton, ed. Patrick Hart, O.C.S.O. (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1981), 75.

3. The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (New York: New Directions, 1973), 311.

4. Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (New York: Doubleday/Image, 1966/68), 144.

5. The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton. 312–13. (For a fuller discussion see also pp. 337–44.) Merton reiterated this monastic focus in letters to Amiya Chakravarty; M. Myriam Dardenne, O.C.S.O.; Finley Peter Dunne, Jr.; and Dom Jacques Winandy. A retrospective analysis ten years after Merton’s death, “Merton and the East” by Jean Leclercq, O.S.B. (Cistercian Studies Quarterly, 8/4, 1978) confirmed Merton’s “purpose remained essentially monastic, directed towards interior growth and not to the acquisition of knowledge. . . .” (312)

6. The School of Charity: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Renewal and Spiritual Direction, ed. Patrick Hart, O.C.S.O., (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990), 388.

7. Ibid. 403–4.

8 Merton wrote to Amiya Chakravarty: “More and more I feel that Asia is in so many ways more congenial to me than the West.” The Hidden Ground of Love: the Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Experience and Social Concerns, ed. William H. Shannon, (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1985), 118.

9. Christine M. Bochen, ed., Thomas Merton: Essential Writings (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2000), 140–41.

10. The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton (New York: New Directions, 1977), 382–83 and 384.

11. William H. Shannon, “Thomas Merton in Dialogue with Eastern Religions,” in The Vision of Thomas Merton, Patrick F. O’Connell, ed. (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 2003), 214.

12. The Hidden Ground of Love, 465.

13. Thomas Merton, Gandhi on Non-Violence (New York: New Directions, 1965/2007), 6.

14. Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, 144.

15. The Asian Journal, 313.

16. The Asian Journal, 316–17.

17. Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite (New York: New Directions, 1968), 43.

18. Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu (New York: New Directions, 1965), 9.

19. Zen and the Birds of Appetite, 15.

20. The Asian Journal, 296.